I think that this is a great idea as it allows readers to easily find and engage with people reading the same books and it also provides a way for the author to get involved and to show up at the conversations that their books are provoking.

There seemed to be a couple of issues with this approach though:

How do you find the "official" hashtag for each book? (Assuming that the author/publisher hasn't thought to mention it somewhere in the book)

Twitter search only returns Tweets from the last few days so the tail end of the conversation is soon lost

For those reasons I have created bookhashtags.com. The site acts as a place where readers can come and find the "official" hashtag for their book and also as a place that displays the entire conversation going on around each book hashtag that has been indexed.

What do you think? Is this side conversation a useful addition to your enjoyment of a book? Which books/hashtags would you like to be added? If you have a book/hashtag to add you can add it here.